Perhaps the least likely of all the current Greek ferries is ANEK's El Venizelos. Ordered by Stena as the third of a four-ship order for their burgeoning Scandinavian operations in 1980, the multiple serious delays at the builders in Poland caused the final two ships to be cancelled - the first and second were eventually completed as Stena Germanica and Stena Scandinavica and have spent their careers relatively uneventfully on the Gothenburg-Kiel route. It was widely rumoured that the designated names for the third and fourth ships were Stena Polonica and Stena Baltica although which ship was to get which name is rather unclear (the El Ven. is usually linked with the former). As it was, their uncompleted hulls were disposed of by the shipyard for completion elsewere. Ship no. 3 went to Fred. Olsen and was briefly named Bonanza before being further off-loaded to ANEK who finally gave the vessel a bit of dignity, completing her to a their own rather different designs and naming her after a well known Cretan politician. The final ship has not been so lucky and languishes uncompleted to this day, having come into the hands of Regency Cruises who promptly collapsed with the proposed Regent Sky still in the Greek shipyard where conversion to a cruiseship had begun.
El Venizelos originally worked on the prime Cretan route into Heraklion, but latterly seen service in the Adriatic, in 2003 being employed on the long route from Patras to Trieste. ANEK have apparently been keen to rid themselves of what is a slow ship compared to many of the other large Adriatic ferries and for the 2004 summer the 'El Ven' was chartered to Tunisia Ferries, returning to her usual Trieste run in October. The Tunisian charter was repeated every year upto and including 2008. |
